Book Review: Gull Island by Anna Porter

For those intimately familiar with Canadian Publishing and its history, the name Anna Porter will likely ring a bell. She started a publishing house that was quite successful for awhile, Key Porter Books, which was then bought out by another publishing house, eventually ceasing operations in 2011. Porter has also written quite a few books herself, both fiction and non-fiction, but Gull Island is the first of hers I have read. I wanted to like this one more than I did. I loved the cottage setting, and a good thriller always gets me excited, but unfortunately this one lagged a little in its plotting.

Plot Summary

Jude belongs to a fractured, WASP-y family who rarely connect outside of their beloved family cottage on an isolated and private island in Georgian Bay. She has been sent by her mother to the cottage during the offseason (April) to find her father’s will. She takes a boat from the marina, lands, and struggles to turn on the running water. She is an alcoholic, so takes frequent breaks to drink and sort through childhood memories and memorabilia on the property. Her wealthy father has disappeared, and he never technically divorced her aging mother who is now suffering from dementia, (although they lived separately for years) so the contents of this will are critical. A huge storm blows in, displacing the boat and Jude’s chances of returning to the mainland anytime soon. This simply increases her drinking, allowing her mind to wander to the partner she recently broke up with, her dead nephew, her prickly relationship with her sister Gina, and the strange run-ins with animals as she pads around the empty cottage and its smaller accompanying cabins. Right away Jude’s recollections are questionable, but as she eats less and less and drinks more and more, her unreliable narration turns even darker.

My Thoughts

Jude is in the middle of a breakdown while sent on this errand by her mother. Just how devastating this breakdown is, is what the reader is tasked with understanding. She isn’t just an unreliable narrator, she is a potentially dangerous narrator (to herself and others) as she mulls over the pain others have caused her and her inability to connect with a partner who so clearly loves and cares about her. Because of the rustic nature of her cottage and the turbulent weather outdoors, she hurts herself little by little, so by the end of the book, she’s covered in blood, and not just her own. The ominous tone of the book is heightened by the fact that mother nature herself is working against Jude. The island is covered in poison ivy as she recalls herself as a young child, and then her niece and nephew each falling in and getting covered in the terrible rash it inflicts. Also, there are two separate run-ins with birds that left me feeling uneasy; taken on their own they wouldn’t be frightening, but the sinister tone of the novel turns these encounters into a warning of things to come.

The plot toes the line between a thriller and a mystery. The danger Jude finds herself in on the island is one element of suspense, but the task she’s given to hunt down this will adds the mystery element to the story. She literally pieces together the puzzle of her childhood, on an actual puzzling table in the living room (everyone cottage has one!). Photos and old documents are placed together as she thinks back to her difficult childhood, never having felt completely at ease around her family, especially her parents. While all this was going on, I was attempting to sort through her recollections and determine what was ACTUALLY happening. Within the first 20 pages Jude remembers being locked in the basement by her father overnight, which pushes this book into a psychological drama – is she suffering from some PTSD? How badly was she neglected? We don’t necessarily get answers to all these questions, but there is a sense of finality by the end of the book.

Even though Jude’s memories of her cottage are both happy and sad, the cottage setting is what I enjoyed most about this book – anyone with a cottage will understand the unique place this holds in a family dynamic. Still, it was not enough to keep me interested in Jude’s ramblings, as her withholding of information felt like an artificial way to build suspense, which I didn’t have the patience for. I still might try a work of non-fiction from Porter, as her writing itself is strong, it’s just the plot I wasn’t a fan of in this one.